Oregon's attorney general is investigating the state's digital
surveillance of Twitter users who wrote #BlackLivesMatter and
other hashtags and has put one employee on leave, saying she was
"appalled" by her department's profiling.

Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum wrote to local civil rights
leaders including the president of the Urban League of Portland
on Tuesday saying Oregon's Criminal Justice Division, which she
supervises, used an online tool to search the Twitter feeds of a
number of residents.

The Black Lives Matter movement grew out of the large
demonstrations in cities including Ferguson, Missouri; New York;
and Baltimore over police killings of unarmed black men.

"When I initially heard about this incident I was appalled,"
Rosenblum wrote in her letter on Tuesday. She gave no details on
the scope of the digital surveillance.

The incident comes as the attorney general is due to report the
findings of a statewide task force she is leading on police
profiling in Oregon to the legislature on Dec. 1.

It also comes amid a wave of demonstrations at U.S. colleges
including Yale and the University of Missouri over the treatment
of minority students.

The Urban League of Portland said among those targeted in the
surveillance was the Justice Department's own Director of Civil
Rights, Erious Johnson, who works in Rosenblum's office and is
married to Nkenge Harmon Johnson, the league's president.

In a letter to the attorney general on Tuesday, the league's
president said it was "improper, and potentially unlawful" for
state investigators to target anyone "merely for expressing a
viewpoint, or for being a part of a social movement."

"We are concerned that such unwarranted investigations are
racially motivated, and create a chilling effect on social
justice advocates, political activists and others who wish to
engage in discourse about the issues of our time," Johnson wrote
in the letter, signed by other civil rights and labor leaders.

Rosenblum said in her letter she shares Johnson's concerns. She
has asked a Portland lawyer to conduct an investigation into
improper conduct, her office said.